Scientists based out of Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport will fly above the clouds for the next month, hoping to produce more accurate forecasts of when and where severe weather will hit homes and businesses.

It's all part of the Mesoscale Predictability Experiment, or MPEX, which runs May 15 to June 15. A crew will fly a Gulfstream V out of the airport at 3 a.m. and climb to 40,000 feet for up to six hours to sample pre-storm atmosphere across Colorado and nearby states.

The crews will be canvassing a region that constitutes the infamous "tornado alley," including parts of Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming and New Mexico, said Morris Weisman, a lead investigator for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

They will be looking for severe weather triggers that might be lurking above the clouds. If they find trouble brewing, the information they gather will be relayed back to weather forecasters and agencies to issue more accurate warnings in a six- to 24-hour window.

Until now, forecasters have relied on a largely ground-based system that struggles to map out storm behavior, especially more than six hours in advance, Weisman said. This is because most weather models need more detail on upper-level disturbances, such as pockets of strong wind or dry air, located several miles above the ground.

As those disturbances move into the Great Plains, they can trigger or suppress severe storms. They are also hard to predict, which is where the jet and its technological payload pays off.

"People want to know whether there will be thunderstorms, and when," said Weisman. "We're hoping to find out where you need to collect observations in order to get the most improvements in short-term forecasts. Better prediction with a few hours of lead time could make a difference in helping people prepare."

The aircraft will use a microwave-based temperature sensor to profile horizontal temperature contrasts miles above the region. It will also deploy parachute-borne minisondes — compact instrument packages — to gather extra detail between flight level and ground level. The minisondes will provide information on temperature, moisture and winds four times each second.

NCAR is the lead agency on the project. Other participants are Colorado State University, the University at Albany, State University of New York; Purdue University; the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Several Storms Laboratory.

The nearly $1 million project is funded by the National Science Foundation.

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